|| thirty-something and too old for this shite. call me mud. he/they. just another non-melanated/"white" queer-ical dog thing || ao3 in my pinned post || radfem free zone & if your feminism isn't intersectional and focused on liberating EVERYONE from patriarchy then you're not a real feminist || from the river to the sea 🇵🇸 keep your antisemitism as far away from me as possible [still just trying to figure out what I can do with half a bedsheet]
I have archive locked my fics as of 04/30/2025 as a result of AI scraping. If you want access to one and don't have an ao3 account, feel free to message/IM me and I'll be happy to provide. If this is frustrating or inconvenient, I'm sorry 😭 please know it frustrates me greatly as well.
Additionally, if you're interested in one of my longer fics that is marked Explicit but are not interested in the smut/skipping past the smut portions, let me know! I can provide a non-smut copy of most of them, save for ones that are purely smut-focused.
Everything I post can be considered rebloggable, you don't have to ask. If I don't want it reblogged, that function will be turned off.
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it's meee, mud
also known a farcical excuse for a person, half-creature, half-whatever else. thirties, he/they or they/he, it doesn't matter. queer-ical boydyke thing. vaguely man-shaped, more dog than man; but that's whatever. I'm queer in all ways, but more specific labels include nonbinary, demi/greysexual, demi/greyromantic, bisexual, et cetera. my beloved✨️is one of the most wonderful people to ever walk this earth and I consider myself the luckiest guy alive to have her in my life. 💚
this blog is MOSTLY sft/sfw, but I still prefer if you're a minor that you do not interact as a personal preference of mine. you're still welcome to interact with my og sfw content, make sfw fic/gif requests, et cetera, I just will not follow back and am not interested in friendship.
if you have any interest in either tipping me or commissioning something, I would prefer that you do so in the form of a donation to a person or community in need. preferably only someone non-white as despite the fact that there are plenty of white people who are in need, historically it's a lot easier for white folks to garner support and donations. just send me a screencap of your donation receipt with any personal identifying details blocked out, but that includes date and recipient information, as proof if you wish to utilise that for a "commission" from me. I reserve the right to refuse if I disagree morally with the request itself, am uncomfortable with the topic (such as requests that include race play, violence against a marginalised group, et cetera) or find issue with the recipient of the donation (such as donations to white supremacists, hate groups, fascists, or similar). if I will not write the request, you can replace that request with something else.
more about me and this blog under the cut ✂️
I can be really bad at responding to messages/comments/IMs, but know that I love every person who talks to me in whatever format and I'm definitely not intentionally ignoring you unless I found something you said to be rude or offensive in some way. I do delete comments and block pretty liberally - while I have no issue interacting with people with different beliefs and opinions than me, I will not engage with you if I believe it would be bad for my mental health and I will stop engaging with you if you do something to indicate you cannot respect my needs, boundaries, and personal autonomy. I grew up homeschooled and in a cult so I'm kind of a mixed bag of trauma and miscellaneous issues but I'm in therapy and working on dealing with my ptsd.
I don't really believe in DNIs since your business is yours and mine is mine, just know that if you're hateful, cruel, racist, misogynistic, transphobic (transmisogynistic or transandrophobic!), fatphobic, intersexist, ableist, think that whatever marginalised identity you have exempts you from being prejudiced, an asshole, or a bully to other marginalised folks, believe in gender essentialism in any way that doesn't just serve as a facet of a kink, are antisemitic, don't believe in a free Palestine, are any flavour of genocide denier, believe in punishment instead of rehabilitation, believe in censorship or identify as an "anti/antishipper," believe it's ever okay to police queer spaces, or just generally show yourself to have a flawed and shitty perspective of the world around you, and you interact with me or I see you in the wild, I will block you and never think about you again!
If you're a reasonable person with reasonable opinions, then you need not worry about that ever happening. If I've gotten to know you and you express something that causes me concern, I will push back on it and make an effort to open a dialogue on the subject before ever making the choice to cut contact with you over it - and I hope you'll extend me the same grace should I ever express something that deserves to be pushed back on or confronted in some way. as a result of my upbringing (and growing up in a country founded on the principles of white supremacy), my adulthood has included a lot of working through the things I was taught and learning to be better, which is a constant battle that will not be over until I am dead and in the ground.
I only tag spoilers for things I'm actively watching and reblog a lot of things I don't watch that I think are pretty or neat, so I'm not always in the know. elsewise, it's all based on my own made-up categories. hmu if there's anything you'd like to see tagged for filtering. I'm pretty agreeable, I just can't know to tag something if I'm not asked.
not a fully inclusive list but a few things I believe in quite passionately in no particular order:
free and liberated palestine
free and liberated taiwan
open borders/unrestricted immigration
end to all ethnic cleansings
independence for hawai'i
universal healthcare
free education for all
trans rights are human rights
reparations
affordable railway systems across the USA
an end to the for-profit prison industry and an abolishment of the prison industry entirely
full rights and healthcare access without restriction for women, trans, and nonbinary people
legalisation and protections for sex work
legalisation and support systems for drugs and drug users, full and comprehensive care for addiction that focuses on helping instead of punishing those affected
I gif sometimes and I sometimes I write. you can find the latter half of that here: new ao3 and here: old ao3
I take requests. gifs require links and timestamps, fics require a willingness to hash out your desired plot over IM so I can sink my teeth into it.
my "original" content:
if you like eroticism, kink, enjoy filthy writing, and/or just generally want to know what my ass looks like, you can find my nsft blog over at et cetera; and I store the bulk of my D20/Dropout brainrot here at the old lady from the store. if you're over 21 and think you'd like to be friends, feel free to ask for my discord!
While I thoroughly enjoyed the rest of Emily Wilson's excruciating review of The Odyssey, I don't appreciate how she puts down what was an insane amount of antiblackness down to "The race-neutral casting of Nolan’s Odyssey was inevitably deplored in some quarters."
That's it?
All those beautiful words to validly tear apart everything else, including how she understands what the Black Best Friend is as a trope, and you weren't willing to say anything else about just how bad Black people were/are treated during production as well as on screen? Potentially on purpose, for attention? As another one of Nolan's critiqueable decisions in this creation process? You recognize the presence of racism in all of this, but weren't willing to even say the word? Just "inevitably deplored". Girl. Understatement.
One day we will treat racism as the serious part of media comprehension that it is. Disappointing, subtle dodge from an author otherwise so eloquent in her critique. But at the same time, I unfortunately can't really expect that sort of thing from white writers, even ones that lean progressive. At least she capitalized Black. 8.5/10.
Because why bring it up at all if that's all you're going to say. The implication that "they did all that yelling and it wasn't even progressive" okay well Emily, my dear, even if it were excellent they would have complained. Because it's racism.
If you're not going to actually address HOW the antiblackness had an effect on Nolan's casting choice (how he had to have known they'd have mistreated Lupita's announcement, with ZERO protection for her throughout the advertising because it brought attention, and then mistreated her as a Black woman WITHIN this version of the story) then don't bother bringing it up at all.
It just felt like, from experience, one of those "I know the name of the trope and I know it applies, but I can't get into detail because I don't actually understand it." And unlike my users who are often irst time approaches to this concept, you're a published translator and writer. I expect better. Well. I deserve to expect better. Now that I had more time to think on it, down to an 8/10.
"Without a tub of wax for my ears – which Himesh Patel’s ever anxious Eurylochus, Odysseus’s doomed right-hand man, uses to sail safely past the Sirens – I was exposed to the full din of thumping sticks, staffs, swords and clashing armour, thunderbolts, crashing waves, grunts, screams, toppling palaces and burning temples. But unlike Matt Damon, the wax-free Odysseus who is tied to the mast as he is conveyed past the Sirens (naked ladies reclining on some uncomfortable-looking rocks), I gazed at the shipwrecks and bloodbaths without any agony of emotion."
and
"There are more female characters than in most Nolan movies, thanks to the source material. But none of them has much to say, in contrast to the characterisations in the poem."
Well, that tracks for a Nolan film -
"The couple have no chemistry and nothing in common. Throughout his wanderings, the uxorious Odysseus clings to a little doll figure, intended to represent his wife (like the spinning top clutched by Leonardo di Caprio in Inception); the real woman is barely more interesting."
Yikes -
"If you’re not going to compose a script in Homeric Greek, or even in metrical English verse, you might as well use something like conversational American English. But writing dialogue is not one of Nolan’s talents. The language is relentlessly expository, humourless and flat."
The lines she calls out in this section will probably make a least a couple of my friends laugh incredulously -
"I was humbled to learn that Nolan has read at least the first line of my translation of The Odyssey into iambic pentameter. In at least one interview, he cited my version of the first line of the poem: ‘Tell me about a complicated man.’ But I would be ashamed to have written any part of this script."
....oh my GOD, EMILY -
"The most troubling ethical problem with Nolan’s Odyssey concerns the decision to film part of the movie in the occupied territory of Western Sahara, thus normalising the ongoing violence against the indigenous Sahrawi people. It is particularly galling that Nolan used this land simply as a visually striking backdrop for a film that centres, aggrandises and redeems the hero of a territorial war on account of his belated and partial acknowledgment of his own guilt."
And deepest respect that she didn't fail to mention the film's colonialism in production. You can tell she added the very last paragraph saying "'thanks for maybe getting people interested in classics" only because an editor begged her to say something - anything - nice about the movie.
#people want to treat their own bad behavior as if it was as inevitable as the weather #and then when the people they're assholes to are like 'actually fuck you' and stand up for themselves #they get all pearl clutchy about how they have a ~right to express themselves~ and how other people ~just can't handle the truth~ #toddlers (via @shesgonnachangetheworld)
The older i get the more i understand why some people become obsessed with privacy, not because they’re hiding something, but because being constantly perceived starts to feel spiritually exhausting.
Did you know that soda machines at restaurants and movie theaters spy on you? That most common new cars now record your sexual preferences and send it to the manufacturer (and also data about anyone who also gets in your car, walks by your car, and maybe happens to be within visual range of your car)? That grocery stores are trying to force customers to download an app to scan barcodes on shelves instead of putting up prices, so the app can scan the phone, decide how much that customer should be squeezed for, and adjust the price? That more and more innocent people are being sent to jail for crimes committed hundreds of miles away because an AI facial recognition algorithm spit their faces out and the cops didn't bother to do the most basic of checks?
I am not uptight about privacy because I'm hiding something. I'm uptight about it because the people who dismiss my right to privacy are dangerous to you and me and our families, personally, all the time.
I want to boost everything this person has said and add on.
The reason I call myself a tomboy now, despite it being seen as a childish word and having had someone swear at me over it because ‘tHeRe’S nO suCh thInG as BoY thInGs anD giRL thIngS sHut uP’ is because I couldn’t call myself that or be like that when I was a kid. It was seen as a negative thing and I was already bullied enough. “Looking like a boy” was the worst thing that could happen to a girl.
And I’m not even 26 yet. We aren’t talking 30+ years ago, we are talking 2000s and even 2010s. It’s only since trans people have become more accepted in the past few years that gender nonconformity has too.
And the people who helped me accept my gender nonconformity more than anyone else? Were trans people. They taught me, “there’s nothing wrong with how you feel. You’re still a valid woman no matter what you wear, how you have your hair or what you’re into ❤️”
And don’t even get me started on how people treat gender nonconforming men. JK Rowling has a lot of nerve to be like “uwu boys can wear dresses and only us gendercrits accept that!” when she has, even in recent works, made femininity in men a negative trait, as well as making masculinity in women a negative trait also.
A lot of people still don’t accept gnc people even now. Just last year I had someone tell me they’d never let their daughter “dress like a boy”, and I’m always terrified to walk into a bathroom in case the next JK Rowling is in there, sees my gender expression and pepper sprays me or worse.
“There’s no such thing as boy things and girl things.” I don’t need to be told that and I’m sure 99% of trans people also don’t need to be told that. Tell that to the society that hates us both instead of actively encouraging that hate.
Gonna point out the og tweet thread is now full of terfs saying that life was better for gay people in the fucking 80s, that it was super easy for them to be a tomboy in the 70s and 80s and therefore it must have been that way for everyone, and that it was totally acceptable to be a gnc gay person in the 80s! 🤪
They’re rewriting history as we speak to try to argue trans acceptance is making it harder to be gay and gnc for youth than it was to be gay in the 80s. This is a blatant lie.
i think this captures the defining pathology of the collective social media psyche right now. we are in the thrall of people who are wantonly cruel but who also demand to be coddled at all times in every way
So, you know how certain Christian missionaries are trained to act in a very obnoxious way, so that most people they preach to will reject them outright, so they feel like the world hates them for being Christian and they can only be friends with fellow Christians? You know that thing?
I think as activists, we sometimes need to stop and ask ourselves whether we're acting like those missionaries. I think this type of behavior is a little more ingrained into our society than some of us realize, and some of us have internalized it without realizing what it's actually meant to do.
OP I know that this is probably a different direction than you were going, but genuinely this advice would do so so much to help people not fall into secular political cults.
A lot of high control groups use this tactic to isolate their members. It’s absolutely not just evangelizing Christians. New age wellness cults often encourage their members to make outlandish and offensive accusations regarding the mental and physical health of other people or their children, because they know that the backlash their members receive will reinforce the idea that the “mainstream” simply has no room for people who like crystals and essential oils. White supremacist cults will seed the vocabulary of new recruits with Nazi dog whistles that fly over those recruits heads, specifically so that they will get clocked as possible neo-Nazis and shunned by anyone who might offer them another perspective and help them to get out before it’s too late. And a lot of left-leaning political cults strongly encourage members to share their views in the most inflammatory ways possible, and then say “you see? everyone outside of this small circle is evil and cannot be relied on” when, inevitably, that produces bad results.
Sometimes I think that activists fall into these patterns completely accidentally, either because they were raised in culturally Christian evangelical environments and never unpacked it, or else because they just aren’t any good at approaching things in a non-inflammatory way and no one’s shown them how.
…But sometimes, these structures emerge in activist circles because those circles are legitimately becoming high control groups.
I think some things to watch out for especially in this regard are:
Are you being directed to behave in an extremely hostile and alienating way? (even if it’s by someone who you trust!)
Does the group you are in immediately shut down any conversation about the effectiveness of an antagonistic strategy? In particular, do they shut that conversation down using in-group stock phrases?
Is experiencing harsh rejection seen as something of a rite of passage?
Do you receive more validation from the group you are in after you have been rejected by someone outside the group than at any other time?
Have you ever been concerned that the antagonistic strategy you are using hurt someone you cared about, only to be quickly advised by members of the group that that person was toxic and that you should actually completely cut them out of your life?
These to me are all pretty significant red flags about the group in question, whatever the specific thing that brings people together there is. If you start noticing them in a group that you are a part of, be that an in-person activist circle or a Discord server or anything in between, take a step back and seriously consider the possibility that the good thing that you joined is turning into something different, and possibly dangerous.
In the words of Jonestown survivor Deborah Layton, “Nobody joins a cult. You join a self-help group, a religious movement, a political organization. They change so gradually, by the time you realize you’re entrapped – and almost everybody does – you can’t figure a safe way back out.”
this is a pdf detailing the BITE model of authoritarian control, a method for determining whether or not you're in a cult.
even if you feel confident you are not and have never been in a cult, it's a good idea to familiarize yourself with the signs, just in case one begins to sneak up on you in the future.
tbh my opinion isnt so much that trans men cannot have male privilege. its that the way we understand male privilege is based in cis women, specifically otherwise privileged (esp. otherwise-gendered privilege, i.e gender-conforming/straight/perisex) cis women's understanding of gender as something static and inherent to who you are, rather than something fluid which is, in part, constructed by society and placed onto you separately in every moment.
can a trans man experience (cis) male privilege? yes. can a trans woman? yes. and so can a cis woman! hell, a femme perisex cis woman with a gender neutral name could if she's assumed to be a cis man on a resume. male privilege is not an on/off switch. the idea that it is stems from cissexist understandings of male/female as entirely separate and static categories which everyone can and must be understood through. trans people in feminism are expected to constantly defend and deflect accusations of being Privileged Male Oppressors by promising cis perisex women that our experiences are just like theirs! we don't have any scary opinions that don't align with their worldview! we swear we won't ever make them have to reflect on how being cis+perisex has biased them and potentially made their analysis of gender at all inaccurate! trans experiences are only considered valuable to cisfeminism to the extent that they reaffirm what cisfeminists already hold true. thats why they only ever want to talk about a very simplistic narrative around wages pre/post-transition. its extremely unthreatening to cis people because it presents transness in patriarchy as just going from one cis role to another; it doesn't ask cis feminists to expand their paradigm to include the ways in which trans people are treated as a class and their own complicity in transphobic oppression.
which is why trans men have been getting fucked over by trans-affirmng cisfeminism. because by virtue of having our gender acknowledged, we are expected to forfeit our place in the feminist movement and adopt the role of outsider along cis men*. and its also why trans women and MTX people get fucked over the minute they cannot or refuse to describe their experiences through the one or two approved narratives. cisfeminism cannot tolerate transness-as-transness. it has to be compressed and reduced and diluted into something that fits within a cis-centric framework. we aren't allowed to have nuanced and intersectional conversations about trans men & other trans folks relationship with male privilege, the things we have to sacrifice to there, how fleeting it can be, the fact that for some of us being read as "biologically male" is actively more dangerous than being read as female... if it isn't familiar to cis women, then it means you aren't really oppressed.
*cis men should not be outsiders in feminism either btw but thats another post
I'm not even kidding it's so clear that everyone sees black people and especially black women as some sort of alternate species. I'm getting into doll collection & customization videos because I've been getting into collecting myself and toys and art are supposed to bring me happiness and even there I can't escape the anti blackness. Like... you're lucky if you find a character or doll that's consistently brown skinned and carefully designed in popular brands. Collectors will always favor light skin or fantasy colors anyways. I had to watch a white creator call a custom Garnet doll "dummy thicc" and describe her in progress proportions as "female rappery" why couldn't you just have said curvy? You're not funny or cool and I'm very tired
"im not saying feminism is for everyone but-" the fuck? well im saying that. feminism is for everyone. yes even cishet men will benefit from feminism and cishet men should be feminists because cishet men are indeed harmed by the patriarchy; nowhere near to the extent that women are, but having a culture that is fully equal and anti-misogynist benefits everyone. have we forgotten that lifting up the disenfranchised people in society helps all of us as a collective? "im not saying that universal and unalienable human rights are for everyone but-" YES THE FUCK THEY ARE LOL
every now n then i think about how native americans as human beings just dont exist in like 99% of mainstream media. in movies or tv shows or books or video games or you know even in porn like we just arent people. when theres a native character theyre like a wild west indian. like truly to ppl we all died back in the 1900s.
even in things like surveys we are often forgotten about entirely, made out to be so small we’re not important enough/statistically significant enough to bother polling or we’re relegated as literal ‘other’s
